Building a better guide bike

Building a better guide bike

A good town bike for the guides needs to do three things:

1: Be mechanically sound enough to make trips from the store to town all day.

2: Keep employees off of our nice Cannondale Comfort rental bikes.

3: Survive drunken crashes.

With those things in mind, I grabbed a can of truck-bed liner:

Guide bike painting Rust oleum

And used it to hose down an old cruiser frame. The bedliner should keep the frame from rusting, and be durable enough to be dropped on the concrete porch at the store..

Since the bike is going to be left outside in rainy Ohiopyle all summer, I used a KMC Rustbuster chain. I’m not sure how much rust it’s going to bust, but it sure looks classy:

KMC bicycle chain Wilderness Voyageurs

After I put the chain on and trued the wheels, it was testing time. Just to make sure everything worked, I locked the coaster brake and threw down some sweet skidz.

Bike Testing Ohiopyle state park

Then the coaster brake broke, and the wheel fell off. The skid testing was postponed.

banged up bike Ohiopyle

A chain link and a few turns of the wrench later, the bike was ready to shred again. I did some more destructive skids, and nothing exploded. Success.

Awesome bike from parts

The dangerously bent fork just makes the handling livelier. It’s a feature, not a problem (until somebody hits the rail road tracks too fast, breaks the fork, and shatters their face.)

 

Wilderness Voyageurs is your full service Ohiopyle bike shop.   Located across from the old Ohiopyle train station on the Great Allegheny Passage.  Hours at the shop are seasonal, so we know we will be open every day from mid-May to mid- September, and all weekends from April 1 to October 1.  If the weather cooperates midweek in April and October and November we will be open at the bike shop.  If you need a minor repair or parts, visit our main Ohiopyle Outfitter shop at 103 Garrett Street, Ohiopyle, PA 15470.  This is the large wooden building located at the northern entrance to Ohiopyle, adjacent to the railroad tracks.

You can reach us at 800-272-4141

posted by Montana